Introduction

      In our lectures and seminars so far we have explored the social and economic developments that took place in the period known as « les trente glorieuses » (1945-1975). This period is one characterized by both rapid change as well as by a deep-seated continuity.

       Up until now, we have paid particular attention to the role and status of women (see my lecture on
« The Domestic Ideal in Postwar France » during this period. We've explored the ways in which women's lives changed (e.g. getting the vote, increasing levels of material well-being, contraception and abortion rights) but also the ways in which many roles or attitudes remained the same (e.g. women being encouraged to stay at home as wives and mothers).

       Now, as we get past the middle of the module, our focus shifts more towards class identity and the question of continuity and change with respect to social class. To what extent did the economic modernization of France in this period lead to greater equality of opportunity and of outcome ? Most of the french in this period, regardless of social class, enjoyed increasing levels of prosperity. However, to what extent did this general rise in living standards correspond to a more equal society in which disparities in both income and opportunity were being erased ?

       Maurice Pialat's Passe ton bac d'abord is a film made and released in 1979, some four years after the end of « les trente glorieuses ». It's a film which explores this question through its representation of a group of young working-class teenagers in the mining town of Lens in northern France.
The young men and women portrayed in the film are poised between the world of school and the world of work (or unemployment), between adolescence and adulthood.
Born in le « baby boom » and raised in a society of constantly rising standards of living, the challenges they face and the opportunities available to them reveal the successes and failures of « les trente glorieuses ».

       We'll come back to a more detailed discussion of the film in a moment, but first let's consider the career, influences and aesthetic of Maurice Pialat, the film's writer and director. Retour...

      Some notes on Maurice Pialat

       Maurice Pialat was born in 1925 and is still alive and working today. He trained first as a painter, exhibiting some of his works in the late 1940s, but made the move into film in 1960. He spent most of that decade working in television, only releasing his first film for cinema, L'Enfance nue in 1969. He came to prominence as a filmmakersomewhat belatedly then, - he was older than many of the filmmakers of la nouvelle vague who made their names much earlier - and only really established himself in the 1970s and 1980s as a distinctive voice in the post-« nouvelle vague » french cinema.

       Pialat made a number of films in the 1970s and early 1980s like Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble (1972) and La Gueule ouverte (1974), Passe ton bac d'abord (1979), Loulou (1980) and A nos amours (1983), and by the mid-1980s, he was such a respected filmmaker that he was able to command high(ish) budgets to make such films as Police (1985), a thriller which some claim to be the last "typical" naturalistic Pialat film (Austin : 1996, p. 116), and literary adaptations and period dramas like Sous le soleil de Satan (1987) and Van Gogh (1991). More recently, he returned to familiar ground with Le Garçu (1995) which starred Gérard Depardieu, a Pialat regular since Loulou. Retour...

      Influences

      Ginette Vincendeau has spoken of Pialat's films as « the meeting place for different historical traditions of
realism » (S. Hayward & G. Vincendeau : 1990, p. 259). I shall come back to the question of realism in a moment, but first let's concentrate on the historical traditions that inform Pialat's cinema. Three main influences have been identified in Pialat's work :

      Firstly, there is Pialat's acknowledged debt to the french film director Jean Renoir as seen in his interest in provincial or regional France, rather than Paris. It's little wonder that Pialat has occasionally been described as
« un cinéaste de la France profonde » (Joël Magny : 1992). Like Renoir, Pialat is interested in ordinary people living lives that we otherwise don't see and which are rarely represented in french cinema. No wonder too then, that Susan Heyward describes Pialat's films as part of a cinema of ordinariness (Heyward : 1993, p. 272). Both directors share the same interest in social class. The working-class mining community of Lens which is the setting for Passe ton bac d'abord is a good example of this.

      
       Secondly, we can place Pialat's work in the context of the « cinéma vérité » of so-called « Left Bank » (« rive
gauche ») School of documentary filmmakers of the 1950s and 1960s. « Cinéma vérité » is the name given to a style of documentary (i.e. factual rather than fictional) filmmaking often involving a two-person crew (camera and sound) using lightweight equipment (portable tape recorders and synchronous 16 millimetre cameras became available in the early 1960s) and interviews. It frequently avoided narrative and is characterized by a non-interventionist approach to characters and lifestyle. Jean Rouch was a leading exponent of « cinéma vérité » documentary and his works - Chronique d'un été (1961) is typical. This influence is clearly discernible in the non-interventionist documentary style of Passe ton bac d'abord.

       Finally, although a little older than most of the main filmmakers associated with « la nouvelle vague», Pialat's work nonetheless can be seen as partly influenced by and partly reacting against their films. For example, unlike most « nouvelle vague » films which have a parisian setting and often middle-class, student or intellectual characters, Pialat's films prefer provincial France and working-class, and often immigrant communities. Formally too, Pialat marked out his difference from la nouvelle vague through his avoidance of complex editing. However, there are a number of similarities : like the films of la nouvelle vague, Pialat was interested in young people and the challenges they face and like the earlier « nouvelle vague » films, he preferred to use unknown or non-professional actors shot on location with lightweight equipment. Retour...

      The Pialat aesthetic

       Despite his initial art school training and early career as a painter, Pialat has consciously avoided making his films "look good" or visually interesting. Unlike, for example, Peter Greenaway, the British filmmaker who followed a similar career pattern and whose films are informed by this training, Pialat's films are a reaction against rather than a continuation of his art school background. In an interview Pialat claimed that he « loathe[d] beautiful photography in the cinema » (quoted in Forbes : 1992, pp. 219-220).

       Pialat's films then aren't pretty in a conventional way (i.e. like Claude Berri's Manon des sources) but the nonetheless have their own style. Until the mid-1980s then, the visual trademarks of Pialat's films until might be said to be :

       • The use of non-professional or little-known actors ; (e.g. children of polish immigrants in Passe ton bac d'abord        like Bernard Tronczyk who plays Bernard and Patrick Playez who plays Rocky).
       • Improvisation or not fully scripted dialogue with little rehearsal time (also used in Passe ton bac d'abord).
       • Colloquial language (used by all the lycéens in Passe ton bac d'abord).
       • Real-life (and unglamorous) locations (the mining town of Lens in Northern France).
       • Rejection of theatrical or elaborate « mise en scène ».
       • Dull, subdued or restrained colours.
       • Unsteady and restless use of hand-held cameras (widely available from the 1960s).
       • Minimal use of musical soundtrack (the jukebox music, supermarket muzak and wedding band used in Passe ton        bac d'abord are all musical sources originating from within scenes in the film).
       • Maximum use of available natural light (possible in early 1960s due to faster and more sensitive film stocks).

       Jill Forbes describes these trademarks as part of what she calls « the Pialat aesthetic » (Forbes : 1992, p. 218), a compositional technique based on a kind of documentary realism. Ginette Vincendeau adopts a similar line and has written of « Pialat's potent, bleak realism and ethnographic concern with unglamorous aspects of French society » (Vincendeau : 1996, p. 114). Finally, of course, there is Ginette Vincendeau description of Pialat's films as « the meeting place for different historical traditions of realism » (S. Hayward & G. Vincendeau : 1990, p. 259). Retour...

       Pialat and realism
   
       The term « realism » crops up a lot in discussions of Pialat's cinema but is a difficult one to define. Whether used in relation to literature, painting or film, realism is an elastic and notoriously difficult concept to define. The art critic Linda Nochlin, however provides us with a useful working definition of realism as characterized by the attempt « to give a truthful, objective and impartial representation of the real world, based on meticulous observation of contemporary life » (quoted in Stam et al : 1992, pp. 184-185). Realism tends to involve a high degree of social, historical and geographical localization, that is to say, it places characters and events in a precise place and time.
Moreover, realism, since its emergence in French literature and painting in the middle of the nineteenth century, is frequently associated with the representation of lower social classes and often with disturbing subject matter (poverty, disease, criminality etc.).

       If we accept this working definition of realism, it's easy to see how Pialat's work may be viewed in this light.
His characters are often working-class, many from immigrant communities, and the themes he tackles in his films are frequently hard-hitting: emotionally damaged children in L'Enfance nue (1969), domestic violence in Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble (1972) ; cancer in La Gueule ouverte (1974) and family breakdown in A nos amours (1983).

       Although Pialat has adapted novels (e.g. Sous le soleil de Satan in 1987), he has written the majority of his films himself and their storylines often emerge from real-life experience and observation. The plot and characterization of Passe ton bac d'abord is a good example of this, as it was constructed from interviews made with teenagers in the mining town of Lens where the film is actually set. The characters, scenarios and much dialogue emerged from recordings of real individuals. Retour...

       Plot, setting and characterization

       So much then for the career, influences and aesthetic of Maurice Pialat. Let's now move on to a more detailed consideration of the film.

       Passe ton bac d'abord follows a group of working-class teenagers, many from polish immigrant origins and all around eighteen or nineteen years of age. The friends are in their final year at school and are facing an uncertain future. Do they work hard and pass their bac, or do they find their own way forward, taking their chances in marriage, in the job market at home or in Paris ?

       Although there is no single central protagonist or couple, a number of characters and couples are accorded greater attention. Broadly speaking, much of the attention is focused on the activities of two male characters, Bernard and Patrick who both spend much of their time looking for sexual conquests and two sets of couples, Philippe and Elisabeth whose relationship develops throughout the course of the film and Agnès and Rocky who marry early and whose marriage looks to be on shaky ground by the end of the film.

       Plot is reduced to a minimum. Little of any real drama happens - there is a fight at the wedding of Agnès and Rocky and a violent confrontation between Elisabeth and her mother - but for most of the film, the action revolves around the changing relationships between the friends and their plans for the future. The teenagers hang out at the local café, Le Caron, or at friends' houses. Relationships (both platonic and sexual) are made and broken off, future plans are discussed (school, work, marriage, Paris etc.).

       A sense of authenticity and historical and social specificity is partly created by the frequent use of real-life locations like school classrooms, cafés, kitchens, streets, football grounds, supermarkets and the like which mark out the territory of the characters. Moreover, both the language (e.g. "mecs", "gars", "nanas", "planquer", "draguer", "fric", "tu te fous de ma gueule"', "sécher les cours") used by the characters and the cultural references (Pink Floyd, The Sex Pistols, Bob Marley) are typical of the age group and the period. Although there is no musical soundtrack as such, popular music of the time played on jukeboxes reinforce the period setting. Retour...

       Relationships with the adult world

       Although the focus is primarily on the friends and their relationships with one another, we are, on a number of occasions, given an insight into their strained relationship with the adult world. The relationship between the young people and with their parents, teachers or other adults is one of hostility and incomprehension. There are frequent family rows and parental pressure. In one scene they are thrown out of hotel bedroom by the proprietors for smoking dope. It's interesting to note that whenever we see they teenagers they are often lacking their own space, or, when they do find it, it is often cramped and overcrowded. Their social space seems to be continually circumscribed or controlled by other adults.

       Of the parents represented in the film, it is only really Elisabeth's mother and father that are shown in any significant detail. Elisabeth is one of the few characters in the film to show any real interest in school but encouragement is not always forthcoming. Her father wants her to do well, and there is a suggestion that he is seeking to fulfil his own ambition to do well at school and university through his daughter. However, his distant and disapproving manner alienates her. He doesn't play a big enough role in her life and his reticence or inarticulacy cannot reach her.


       Elisabeth's mother too is not unsympathetic but advocates a more conservative option for her daughter. It is Elisabeth's mother who becomes particularly close to Philippe, whom she perceives to be a promising potential husband to her daughter and a good son-in-law.
The violent confrontation mother and daughter have after the wedding of Agnès and Rocky relates to Elisabeth's flirtatious behaviour with Bernard. Her mother fears that her future, a future seen in terms of her potential marriageability will be endangered. This kind of scene is typical of Pialat and Keith Reader has claimed that « the rawness of...emotional confrontations » is « a virtual trademark of the work of Maurice Pialat » (Reader : 1993, p. 94). Elisabeth's mother has a fatalistic, éviter le pire kind of attitude to life in which few risks are taken and the least worst option is always preferred. Throughout the film, Elisabeth defines herself in opposition to her mother and choses a more daring lifestyle of risk and pleasure. Retour...

       Gender roles and sexuality

       The youth culture portrayed in Passe ton bac d'abord is at times a rather macho one. The main occupation of the young men appears to be sexual conquests, whether from their own social circle of friends or with others like Frédérique who Bernard meets on holiday. The talk between the young men is often about sex : who's slept with whom, who's a virgin, who's a "salope" and so on. There's a certain amount of sexual competition too, in particular between Bernard, the town's "dragueur" who appears to enjoy the adoration of most of the young women, and Patrick. There is also the fight between Bernard and Philippe caused by at the wedding. Sex and sexuality for the young men in Passe ton bac d'abord is not simply about pleasure but about status, prestige, and male identity. This is particularly in evidence in Bernard's relationship with Frédérique, a confident middle-class Parisian he meets on holiday by the sea. There is a strong sense that his seduction of her is as much to do with class and with the feeling of power of having made a sexual conquest of this "bourgeoise" of impeccable credentials. He even takes her underwear - a one-piece body featuring, symbolically, a lion on it - back to his friends as a kind of trophy.

       The young women, although enjoying a degree of sexual freedom and control, are often the objects of the sexual desires of the male characters and, in particular of the middle-aged men in the film. One of the friends is subject to the sexual, and financial, advances of the predatory, and pathetic, café owner. Patrick's sister Valérie is offered a dubious modelling contract, which her outraged parents turn down on her behalf. Moreover, the attitude of the philosophy teacher towards Elisabeth when she meets him to discuss her essay is not entirely professional.
Although he initially appears a sympathetic character - he doesn't criticize Elisabeth and her friends when he sees them missing classes - his conversation with Elisabeth soon turns to her private life and sexual relationships.

       The young women in the film are often only perceived in terms of their sexuality - there are a number of scenes of older men leering at young women (in the café, on holiday etc.) - and not their intellect. With the exception of the philosophy teacher, whose attitude to Elisabeth is ambiguous, it is only Elisabeth's father who expresses disappointment that his daughter is not spending as much time on her studies as she does on boys.
However, his distant and disapproving attitude is not really encouragement and, as I mentioned before, he remains too inarticulate to really help her.

       It's difficult to watch the film and not get the impression that conservative gender roles and expectations remain deeply entrenched, with marriage and motherhood as the most viable option for young working-class women like Agnès and Elisabeth. The ending of the film is not entirely dissimilar to that of Les Petits enfants du siècle as both conclude with heavily pregnant young women preparing for marriage rather than a career. Elisabeth, like Joysane, spends her adolescence trying not to be like her mother only to end up, we assume, a young wife and mother herself living the small-town life in Lens. Retour...

       Education in postwar France
      
       Pialat's Passe ton bac d'abord is a film very much about education. This is clear from the title with its reference to the baccalauréat and through a number of scenes in which the importance of this qualification is debated (e.g. the dinner scene chez Elisabeth). It is possible to read Passe ton bac d'abord as a film which questions France's allegedly meritocratic educational system (meritocracy : social system formed on the basis of superior talent or intellect) and the belief in education as a vehicle of social and occupational mobility.

       The period of « les trente glorieuses » witnessed rapid growth in education, particularly, in higher education.
In 1936, for example, there were just 74,000 university students in France. By 1945 this had nearly doubled to 130,000. By 1965 it had nearly trebled to 367,000 and by 1971 nearly doubled again to 680,000. However, much of this expansion was attributable to the baby boom that started in the mid-1940s rather than to any real widening of the social mix of students. The social composition of the student population remained substantially unchanged. Middle-class children, whose parents came from the so-called « professions libérales » (lawyers, doctors, professors etc.), were still over-represented and working-class children still under- represented. To give you just one example of this imbalance, in 1961, 58.5% of university enrolment came from the middle classes and only 5.5% from the working classes. Higher education, and the passport to higher education, the « baccalauréat », were very much the « chasse gardée » (private hunting ground) of the middle classes. Those working-class students in the system tended to be the exception and, in general, older than their more privileged fellow students.

       During the 1960s and 1970s a number of theories were put forward to explain the failure of working-class children within the school system and their low participation rates in higher education. Perhaps the most influential account came from the sociological research produced in the 1960s and 1970s by Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron. Two books in particular stand out : the first is Les Héritiers published in 1964 and the second is
La Reproduction published in 1970. Although they are both collaborative works, the language and concepts used reveal the greater influence of Bourdieu.

       Bourdieu and Passeron's work of this period sets out to theorize the relationship between the educational system and social reproduction, that is to say, the ways in which our society "reproduces" the citizens it needs to maintain the « status quo ». The educational system, Bourdieu and Passeron claim, plays a major role in "reproducing" individuals who will perpetuate the divisions of capitalist society and in ensuring that inequalities pass on from one generation to the next. The educational system played a central role in reproducing class relations but this role was, Bourdieu and Passeron claimed, concealed under the mask of supposedly egalitarian and meritocratic processes.

       A concept central to Bourdieu and Passeron's work is that of what they call « l'arbitraire culturel ». Bourdieu and Passeron rejected the idea of culture with a capital C, that is to say, they claimed that no culture was superior to another. All cultures were arbitrary. However, in order to consolidate and legitimate their power, the dominant classes who control economic and political resources, sought to impose their own culture as the only one of any value. This « arbitraire culturel » of the dominant classes was imposed through what Bourdieu and Passeron called
« l'action pédagogique ». By this, they meant social interaction with adults or peers, the family environment and, above all, institutionalized education. Bourdieu and Passeron claimed that all pedagogic action, and by extension, all schooling, was a kind of symbolic violence : « Toute action pédagogique est objectivement une violence symbolique en tant qu'imposition, par un pouvoir arbitraire, d'un arbitraire culturel. » - Pierre Bourdieu & Jean-Claude Passeron,
La Reproduction (Paris : Editions de Minuit, 1970) -.

       It followed from Bourdieu and Passeron's arguments, that it was primarily those children who were already in possession of some of the dominant culture who'd performed best at school. They used the term cultural capital
(« le capital culturel ») to describe middle-class children's symbolic mastery of « l'arbitraire culturel ».

       Success at school was not then, claimed Bourdieu and Passeron, the result of intelligence, imagination and hard work, but the reward for accumulating and reproducing the necesary « cultural capital ». Here is an extract from Pierre Bourdieu's later sociological writings on the notion of « le capital culturel » and its relationship to the school system :

       « La notion de « capital culturel » s'est imposée d'abord comme une hypothèse indispensable pour rendre compte de l'inégalité des performances scolaires des enfants issus des différentes classes sociales en rapportant la « réussite
scolaire », c'est-à-dire les profits spécifiques que les enfants des différentes classes peuvent obtenir sur le marché scolaire à la distribution du « capital culturel » entre les classes et les fractions de classes. Ce point de départ implique une rupture avec les présupposés inhérents aussi bien à la vision ordinaire qui tient le succès ou l'échec scolaire pour un effet des
« aptitudes » naturelles qu'aux théories du capital humain » .» - Pierre Bourdieu, « Les Trois états du capital culturel » in Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales n°30 (1979) -.

       Bourdieu and Passeron maintained that « cultural capital », like economic capital, works to the advantage of those who are already in possession of a certain degree of it in the first place. Those groups or classes who have already acquired an initial predisposition towards that symbolic mastery will do best at school. In practice, this meant children of middle-class parents. The concept of « cultural capital » then, could be used to explain the poor academic performance of working-class kids. Lacking the sort of culture endorsed and valued by the educational institutions, working-class children inevitably did badly at school. The school system ensured that only those children in possession of the requisite « cultural capital » transmitted to them by their parents acheived any degree of academic success. Retour...

       Education in Passe ton bac d'abord

       Now, how does this specifically relate to the working-class teenagers represented in Passe ton bac d'abord ?
A recurrent theme in the film is that of the friends' indifference to their education. We can see this indifference as coming from what Bourdieu and Passeron call the « pedagogic ethos » of the working-class. By « pedagogic ethos », they meant the different attitudes or predispositions held by different classes towards education. The « pedagogic ethos » of many working-class people is quite complex, varying from a defeatist « I wasn't really cut out for school anyway » attitude, to a more pragmatic approach that education's only worth is its « trade-in » value in the labour market.

       In Passe ton bac d'abord, the characters are not so much excluded from school ; it is more case of them excluding themselves from it. The opening and closing scenes of the film in which the philosophy teacher repeats his introductory class encouraging his new students to keep an open mind and to question everything they have learnt so far, underlines the pointlessness of the educational system and its apparent lack of relevance to their own lives. Moreover, the higher levels of unemployment which began to emerge in the middle of the 1970s underlined the loss of value of educational qualifications like the « baccalauréat ».

       The failure of the educational system to reach out to young men and women like Elisabeth and Agnès, Bernard, Patrick and Philippe, and to offer them a viable alternative to coalmine, factory, supermarket till, dole queue or early marriage and motherhood implicitly calls into question the belief in education as a vehicle of social and occupational mobility. One might argue that Passe ton bac d'abord is simimlar to other films and texts produced in the years immediately following the events of May 1968 - one might cite Claude Duneton's Je suis comme une truie qui doute (1976) or Pascal Laine's La Dentellière (1973) here - in its pessimism about class, culture and education. Retour...

       Conclusion
      
       The still lives of the young people depicted in the film offer a rather negative account of the social changes of the period and a pessimistic vision of what the future holds for young men and women like those portrayed in the film.

       Despite the great changes witnessed during « les trente glorieuses », disparities in educational success and career opportunities and lifestyle choices remained stubbornly part of the french society. Retour...

[Texte publié avec l'autorisation de son auteur.]

Tony Mc Neill
Senior Lecturer in Learning and Teaching Development - Learning and Teaching Development Unit.
Kingston University (United Kingdom).


Further reading :
• G. Austin, Contemporary french cinema : an introduction (Manchester : Manchester University Press, 1996).
• K. Reader, « French cinema since 1945 » in M. Cook (ed.), French Culture since 1945 (London : Longman, 1993).
• J. Forbes, The Cinema in France : after the new wave (London : BFI/Macmillan, 1992).
• S. Hayward & G. Vincendeau (eds), French film : texts and contexts (London : Routledge, 1990).
• S. Hayward, French national cinema (London : Routledge, 1993).
• J. Magny, Maurice Pialat (Paris : Editions de l'Etoile/Cahiers du cinéma, 1992).
• P. Sorlin, European cinemas, european societies 1939-1990 (London : Routledge, 1991).
• R. Stam, R. Bourgoyne & S. Flitterman-Lewis, New vocabularies in film semiotics : structuralism, post-structuralism and beyond (London : Routledge, 1992).
• G. Vincendeau, The Companion to french cinema (London : BFI/Cassell, 1996).
• A. Williams, Republic of images: A History of french filmmaking (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1992).